44 
toner's address. 
probabilities are in favor of the former supposition, 
for the habits of the hunter Indians ever since the dis- 
covery of America are entirely opposed to any assump- 
tion that would attribute to them the labor necessary 
for the construction of these works. There certainly 
has been no building of mounds and but little intrusive 
occupation of them since Europeans first came to 
America. But the probabilities amount almost to 
certainty that they have not been generally occupied 
within the last thousand years. There are found in 
many parts of our country the remains of large and 
well-designed fortifications, as well as of walled cities. 
A fine example of the latter was recently discovered 
in the valley of the Rio Chama, near Abiquiu, N. 
Mex., by Assistant Surgeon H. C. Yarrow, U. S. A., 
which is described and figured in Lieut. G. M.Wheeler's 
Report for 1875, p. HS-"^ 
however, according to Mr. Baldwin, jr., in his Ancient America (p. 
32)5 Mr. Squier has reaffirmed his first opinion on the subject of the 
Mound-Builders, and now holds them to be a distinct race. 
^ It will be remembered that Dr. Hildreth counted over eight hun- 
dred rings, each representing one year's growth, upon the trunk of a 
tree cut from the mound at Marietta, Ohio. (Lyell's Antiquity of 
Man, p. 41.) Calculations of this kind have been made at other 
mounds, and by different observers, all corroborative of the general 
conclusion that they were of great antiquity. As indicative of the age 
of the mounds and earth-works throughout Ohio and Kentucky, it 
will be remembered that when first discovered they were covered by 
thick forests of large trees. General Harrison, in an address before 
the Historical Society of Ohio, dwelt upon the fact that lands aban- 
doned are not, until after many successive growths of scrubby timber, 
taken possession of by a prevailing class that dominate all others and 
grow to be large trees, such as were found throughout Ohio and Ken- 
tucky, covering these works as thickly as the land elsewhere. Conse- 
quently, these forests would have required many hundreds of years for 
the commencement of such forest-growths after the lands were aban- 
doned by the Mound-Builders. 
